June 25, I860.] ADDITIONAL NOTICES. 255 



Again : as a weatherbeaten geologist, I know full well that the science 

 which 1 have most cultivated would be void of a foundation, if it did not rest 

 on the principles of phvsical geography ; for much of the labour of the geologist 

 consists in restoring, not in imagination, but by a positive appeal to data 

 registered on tablets of stone, the former outlines of sea and earth at diiferent 

 successive periods, whilst he marks the various oscillations of land and water, 

 as well as the necessary accompaniments of grand meteorological changes. 



If, therefore, the geographer is guided to the relative position of his localities 

 by the lights of astronomy, he also knows that accurate observation of all 

 terrestrial changes is of the highest value in enabling his close ally the geo- 

 logist to interpret and read off the former conditions of the crust of the earth. 

 For, just as geography in its present phase is necessarily connected with ethno- 

 logy, so its earliest features as a science can best be thoroughly comprehended 

 by the geologist. His is the province to bring to the mind's eye the various 

 relations of land and water through the olden periods, when most of our 

 present continents were formed beneath the sea, and to trace the successive 

 elevations and depressions which characterized epochs long anterior to the 

 existence of man. Even in those remote times, when some lands were 

 elevated and others depressed, we have ascertained that the waters and the 

 earth were occupied by various animals which successively lived and died, to 

 be followed by other and more highly organized races, until at length a being 

 endowed with reason was created. 



And when, having gone through all the long epochs of geological time, we 

 approach the period when man appeared, how interesting is it to endeavour to 

 unravel the changes which our lands underwent from that recent geological 

 date when the British Isles formed part of the terra firma of Europe ! Then, 

 at a later period, how inciting is it to mark the signs of the commixture of 

 the rudest and earliest works of man with the remains of animals, most of 

 which are now extinct, yet mixed up with others which have lived on to our 

 own day ! 



Thus, whilst the geological geographer who visits the banks of the Somme, 

 sees such an assemblage of relics beneath great accumulations formed by 

 water (as I have recently witnessed myself), he is compelled to infer, that at 

 the period when such a phenomenon was brought about, the waters which 

 have, now diminished to an ordinary small river, rose great inundations 

 to the height of one hundred feet and more above the present stream, and 

 swept over the slopes of the chalk on which the primeval inhabitants were 

 fashioning their rude flint instruments, — when, as I would suggest, they 

 escaped to the adjacent hills, and, saving themselves from the sweeping flood, 

 left no traces of their bones in the silt, sand, or gravel. 



This linking on of geology with human history and the works of primeval 

 art comes legitimately under our consideration ; and here we have just as full 

 right to discuss and test this question as my dear friends the geologists ; the 

 more so, as it was to this connection between geology and history that Lord 

 Wrottesley called the attention of the Association in his Presidential Address. 



Then again, as we descend with the stream of time until we reach historical 

 records, the geographer next endeavours to throw light on the marches of the 

 great generals of antiquity and the sites of ancient cities ; and then truly the 

 geologist, geographer, and ethnologist become united with the antiquary and 

 historian. Taking our recent British example of the discovery of the Uri- 

 conium of the Romans at Wroxeter in Shropshire, where is the geographer 

 who has looked at the mounds of earth which till recently covered that 

 ancient city, and is not convinced that causes arising from the combined 

 destruction by man and natural decay have produced the mass of overlying 

 matter on the shores of the Severn which has hidden from our vision one of 

 the famous Roman towns of Britain ? As I have delighted in tracing the sites 



